7 Minute Daily Exercises

THE GAMEPLAN

Normally, I'd have to plan out a logical pathway I'll use to navigate learning a skill, but as with several of the other things I've tried lately, this is less a skill to be learned and more a task to be attempted.

This is also strange for me, because it requires me to be more openly vulnerable than most of the skills and posts I put up here. But a resolution is a resolution, and I've been looking for an opportunity like this for a while, so I'll take it.

7 Minute is a nice daily exercise guide / app on Android I found from WheezyWaiter, aka Craig Benzine, on his vlogs, and as the name indicates, it's a short, daily exercise guide to take 7 minutes out of each day.

Being someone who works in front of a computer most of the day (as a developer and designer I really don't have much freedom there), I unfortunately and very consciously don't get a lot of needed exercise in per day. Not to pretend like a seven minute light exercise makes up for it, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyways, to see if there would be any changes, and if it would help me start the day better, for example.

So here's the plan I'll follow for the next several weeks: I'll start the day with the seven minutes, before my morning shower, and optionally follow it up with seven more minutes during the night, before sleep. And if there's anything I'm doing horribly wrong, please point it out down below in the comments -- I'm not about to pretend I know what I'm doing.

But with that in mind, here goes another experiment.

WEEK 1: HURTS

Okay, that may have been an overexaggeration. It didn't hurt, so much as it just got me exhausted. Which is sad. And true. And probably my fault.

After a few days of just following the seven minutes of exercise, I decided to record my progress, to see if any improvements are made in my ability to complete them or complete them faster over time, besides just improving my morning routine.

CONTINUING ON...

If you're looking for the short version of the story, it's that seven minutes is probably going to change your life, unfortunately.

Don't get me wrong. There are still a number of benefits that the seven minutes of activity does to my day-to-day, but noticeable improvements in fitness isn't one of them. Maybe that's because I already get some exercise in between my commuting on my bike and foot for over an hour almost every day, or maybe it's that I just happen to have a particular body type. Regardless, if you're looking to get ripped, surprise, this isn't the way to go about it.

For me, though, that was perfectly fine. As a person who's working on something almost every waking minute (exempting meal times, commutes, and bathroom breaks), the seven minutes of focusing on a physical activity on a regular schedule was just a really great refresher.

In regard to the effect it had on my days, it was comparable to meditating, in that it helped clear my mind and focus on nothing important in particular for some time, and I think I'll be keeping it around as a go-to when I need a break for a few minutes.